frp has an option to encrypt the tunnel

or something like nanokvm

Thanks for sharing!

eSpeak-ng

yeeah, from my experience with eSpeak - I don’t trust it to sound even remotely human or to pronounce everything correctly.

But it might be a viable alternative for somebody else!

I googled around and I’m pretty sure there is no such thing.

• The best ready to use project I stumbled upon is https://github.com/yousefvand/pronunciations and I have no clue whether it still works, because it uses google voice online once and downloads the robot made audio.

• There is Lingua Libre, but I couldn’t even find where to get the raw dataset for download

• dict.cc has great online audio in the web and an offline app without audio …

the only poiny I am arguing for is:

if somebody is looking for a solution that is effectively equivalent to a proxy, they can enter into the search engine either “vpn” or “proxy” and they will find more results that will work for their usecase that way.

While you are getting hung up on semantics that I technically agree on, but I find meaningless in the real world usecase of looking for a solution that effectively works like a proxy.

If you have one of those cars that can be used as a boat. And you only ever use it in water and never on land, it doesn’t really make sense to me to exclusively call it a car. Even though it factually is one, it acts as a boat. At least call it carboat.

If I have a VPN, but it’s sole purpose is to take all the traffic that knocks on it’s network-adapter and shove it down a dev/tun and vice verca, why can we not say (with the goal of clear communication and precise descriptions) that it effectively acts as a proxy ?

Hell the ability to access the internet via the tunnel, called Split Tunneling, is also controllable.

It’s that ability to control where the tunnel terminates that allows consumer VPNs, like Proton, to be used the way they are.

you can do the same split tunneling via proxy servers

while private individuals absolutely do use VPNs as an ersatz replacement for Proxy Servers they are nowhere near the whole use case for VPN

I agree. That also means that for certain usecases they are equivalent. It’s sometimes worth checking all options to find the best one for that specific case.

You’re correct.

Most people only search for “VPN” because thats the term that got marketed for decades.

But the problem can be solved by using a proxy as well.

The intent of my comment was just to point to a second term - “proxy” - that can be used to find more valid, alternative solutions to the problem of making your homelab hosted services publicly available. And I think you agree with me, that proxy is the term closer to the usecase, even though we both correctly state that a VPN can be used as a proxy.

To make a bad analogy (it’s the first thing that came to mind): It’s like people buying a wok, even though they really just need a pan. And so they only search for wok, because every company says wok all the time, even though they will never use the wok as a wok, but just as a normal pan.

Even by your definition that should be a VPN, right?

… in my case, I have a homelab, a VPS and a user of a service that runs on my homelab. The VPS is just a proxy for the homelab. The user (client) talks to the homelab (server), through the VPS (proxy) so not, not really a VPN, even if I’d set up openVPN between VPS and homelab. They are not two clients.

It’s pretty neet and I feel like there is a clear value exchange for both parties in the free tier, so less shady than cloudflare.

I think thats up to debate.

Wikipedia says:

A virtual private network (VPN) is an overlay network that uses network virtualization to extend a private network across a public network, such as the Internet, via the use of encryption and tunneling protocols. In a VPN, a tunneling protocol is used to transfer network messages from one network host to another. Host-to-network VPNs are commonly used by organisations to allow off-site users secure access to an office network over the Internet. Site-to-site VPNs connect two networks, such as an office network and a datacenter.

So my argument is, if it is not used for private communication between multiple clients, it’s not really a VPN.

Lets say, we both connect to the same Proton VPN server - our computers would not see each other and would not be able to connect to each other via that service. It has effectively the same function as a proxy - making your public internet traffic appear to come from the IP of the proxy server instead of your home IP.

Whereas if you set one up yourself with openVPN for example, we could make it so that we both get a VPN internal IP that we could use to directly connect and idk, play minecraft or something. Instead of connecting through the public internet, we would connect through a virtual network that is private for the two of us.

Oh I forgot to say: I have crowdsec on the VPS in front of frp and traefik on the server at my home, where I add all the modules I want.

frp just pipes all the packets through transparently.

But yeah, same thing, should work the same and there are dozens of ways to set that all up.

I have the same setup but using frp which stands for fast reverse proxy.

The term VPN is pure marketing bs. What is called VPN today used to be called Proxy Server.

I’ve also heard good things about using Pangolin for the same setup.

this person adults - enjoying their office software

US of A often has way lower hdd prices compared to Europe.

Take the serverpartdeals price and add shipping and import tax.

Heroes of Umbra (maple-story-like)

Veloren

Games often write to Program Files, system-wide redistributables, or shared folders. VC++ runtimes, DirectX, .NET, PhysX installers all require admin.

Repack scripts are usually written to “just work” everywhere, so they have the stuff mentioned above built in. Or maybe fitgirl is just lazy and asks for admin even if it is not strictly needed.

There is definitely a risk of malware etc. when pirating, so you are not dumb to be wary.

Ideally you’d install the game in a VM first and run some virus/malware check on the whole VM afterwards.

We know you’re not looking for a backup solution. But at least I fucked up by being in the same situation as you a long time ago and it resulted in hours of agony over lost project files, personal photos and months of restoring access to hundreds of accouns. Trust me, you don’t want to go through that.

What happens with your data and backup if:

• your drive dies?
• someone breaks in and steals the pc?
• your house burns down?

How will file history help you get back those files?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup#3-2-1_Backup_Rule

The idea that a minimal backup solution should include 3 copies of the data, stored on 2 different types of storage media, and one copy should be kept offsite, in a remote location

https://sourcehut.org/

Yeah, when you are in a window, right click on the taskbar (or press ALT+F3) > special application/window properties > search for focus stealing prevention

Sometimes you have to fiddle with the matching criterea to get exactly the window you want.

You can also find a list of all your special app configs in the settings app.

at some point windows removed the focus stealing prevention setting. So I moved to KDE plasma, which has global AND per app focus stealing prevention settings.